The kindness factor

A Government with a focus on compassion and examples of goodwill in recent national crises have prepared Kiwis to confront the Covid-19 pandemic in the tradition of the selfless people who stepped forward during the Spanish flu, writes Kelly Dennett.

On Thursday the manager of a cleaning company dropped off free sanitiser to the sandwich bar across the road; the grateful woman behind the till cried. A day earlier a woman buying a fridge was given a significant discount by a staffer, who took more care than usual to explain the different models. It felt like he needed someone to talk to, the woman said later. Online, self-isolators were deluged with offers from friends, family, and strangers, to drop off food and supplies.

Amid footage of supermarket shoppers fighting over toilet paper, of incidences of racism and suspicion, there were moments of kindness in New Zealand. In Wellington, teenagers Aden O’Connor and Sophie Handford launched a support group for self-isolators. The Wellington Student Volunteer Army ran errands for, and spoke on the phone with, people self-isolating.

Hamilton book stores dropped off reading material to elderly people, so the group most vulnerable to coronavirus wouldn’t have to leave their homes if they didn’t want to. In the capital, a hotel group invited affected travellers to pay what they could on their stays.

And on Tuesday, when the number of coronavirus cases in New Zealand was 12 (it reached 52 yesterday), Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stood up in Parliament and delivered a message imbued with the value she’s consistently said underpins her politics: be kind.

‘‘One thing I am certain of, we are a nation who has been shaped by our experiences and they have often been tough, harsh, and unpredictable,’’ she said. ‘‘That is when New Zealanders are at their best. That is when we rally, when we look after one another. My final message is this, to New Zealanders: be strong, but be kind. We will be OK.’’

Her words had flu pandemic expert, Emeritus professor Geoff Rice, thinking of 1918 when New Zealand was in the grip of a similar public health crisis – the Spanish flu, which killed 9000 Kiwis. Rice, author of Black Flu 1918: the Story of New Zealand’s Worst Public Health Disaster, recalls kindness was a central feature of the country’s response.

‘‘At first nobody knew how dangerous it was going to be, yet retired nurses volunteered to staff emergency flu hospitals in schools and church halls, and neighbours went to check on their neighbours,’’ he said.

While schools were closed teachers went door to door, looking for serious cases. Other volunteers commandeered vans and cars to ferry the sick to hospital. They were an army of flu fighters, Rice says.

‘‘Their weapons were simple: cough mixture, disinfectant, face masks, cans of soup – and sympathy. They risked their own lives to help others. Doctors and nurses and chemists were the front-line troops, leading the charge.’’

The Great War had impressed on New Zealanders the importance ofduty, service, sacrifice and selflessness. ‘‘If young men were willing to risk their lives in war, surely civilians should do the same at home.’’

Rice believes altruism has

since been killed off, in part by the economic reforms of the early 1980s, led by then prime minister David Lange and finance minister Roger Douglas. New Zealanders turned to individualism in a way that would have been unfathomable decades prior.

Dr Andrew Dean, who wrote the book on Rogernomics (Ruth, Roger and Me: Debts and Legacies), says this period redefined the relationship between individuals and the state. Reformers oversaw a shift in national character – from relying on the state to fix problems, which encouraged poor productivity, to becoming a nation of ‘‘self-reliant strivers and entrepreneurs’’.

While those in strife were instead encouraged to look to their families, iwi and churches, and difficult times were a prompt to work harder, cutbacks meant many people were overnight newly reliant on others. ‘‘For many, it meant poverty.’’

While community efforts to make life liveable for the vulnerable are present more than before, the efforts are a stand-in for the absence of statesponsored care, he says.

‘‘The consequences of the economic reform period on kindness is not so much that people are less kind to each other, but rather that the infrastructure that might support it – even make it a way of life – has withered away.

‘‘We have no less need than in the past to be kind to each other, and we’re no less receiving of that love. Crisis does tend to bring us together . . .we have it in us to be kind in times of need, even if we have decreasingly been encouraged to behave that way.’’

Rice sees a glimmer of New Zealand rekindling its compassion. Even in 1918 there was food hoarding, ‘‘but my experience of the Christchurch earthquakes gives me hope that the values of 1918 are still alive and well’’. Marae opened their doors for the displaced, Kiwis donated millions to Red Cross, and volunteers went without sleep to check on others.

Similar acts of generosity have been seen in other disasters. Crippling earthquakes, Pike River, the Christchurch mosque attacks, and the White Island disaster in December linger in the country’s collective consciousness.

During the latter two occasions, Ardern was consistently praised for her compassion, her quickness to embrace being most notable after the mosque attacks – and

‘We have it in us to be kind in times of need, even if we have decreasingly been encouraged to behave that way.’ DR ANDREW DEAN